


Childhood

by TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Grief, Hunters, Hurt, John Winchester being a douche, Pre-Series, non-con elements, slightly abusive John Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 22:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3586650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving/pseuds/TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short look into the Winchesters' lives from 1983 to circa 1996.</p><p>(Yes, I went and changed the title. This one's better I think)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childhood

**Author's Note:**

> This was not supposed to happen. I was having happy Destiel/mpreg feelings and suddenly this wanted out. Idek what went wrong and I do apologize.
> 
> I own not these characters, and every other disclaimer you can think of.

Dean Winchester has a roof above his head, toys and friends to play with, parents who lavish him in love and adoration and soon he’ll become a big brother. His favorite pass time is to curl up next to his mother and with a hand on her distended belly feeling his little brother or sister kicking him. He may not know it, after all he’s only four, but he is a blessed child.  
Dean Winchester’s childhood ends before he turns five, when his brother’s nursery catch on fire and his mother dies. This, his father yelling at him to take his brother outside, is his first clear memory.

***

For a while Dean doesn’t speak. He quietly takes care of his brother and himself, while watching John surviving on a liquid, golden diet. When there’s a couple empty bottles lying around and his father’s voice becomes slurred he takes his brother and tucks them both in under his blanket. The days and weeks following his mother’s death are lonely and quiet, only filled with his father’s anguished sobs and his brother’s cries, the both of them whit no other means of communication than this. Once he tries to get his father’s attention: There’s neither diapers nor milk for Sammy and the infant is crying and it breaks Dean’s heart. The slap he gets across his cheek teach him not to ask again, so he steals money from his father’s wallet and goes shopping. It does not end well, and it’s a week before he can sit comfortably, but they never run out of diapers or baby food again.  
Two days after this, John puts his sons in the backseat of his car and leaves Kansas for good.

***

They spend the next couple of years on the road, sleeping in the car or creepy motel rooms. Every night Dean makes sure his brother eats, makes his dad a sandwich, and if there’s anything left he eats that himself. If they’re in a room John’s most likely to leave immediately, so Dean makes sure that Sammy’s clean and content, before he puts him to bed, telling him a bed time story or singing ‘Hey Jude’. When Sammy’s asleep he cleans the room, mostly by throwing away the empty bottles. He tried once to get rid of them all, his father’s fists taught him not to do that again. At dawn he’s awaken by his father’s drunken stumbling through the door, and he lies there praying Sammy will stay asleep, the kid does and within minutes John’s passed out on his bed snoring loudly. The next thing he knows there’s something big and dark looming over him and he barely has time to open his eyes before his father grabs him by his shirt collar and hisses angrily at him to take Sammy out because he’s too loud. Dean’s eyes automatically darts towards his brother who is sitting silently on a chair with a pen and a piece of paper, clearly preoccupied with some sort of drawing - even at three Dean knows his brother’s a genius - and opens his mouth to say something, but John simply slaps him, with a “don’t talk back to me, boy”. With tears prickling in his eyes, Dean just nods and twists in his father’s grip to get a hold of his jeans, within seconds he’s dressed and he takes the note John holds out at him, lifts up Sammy ( _kid’s getting too big for this_ , he thinks) and walks out the door. 

Dean takes them to the park nearby, and, knowing his brother is hungry, finds a hot dog stand and buys him one. Sammy doesn’t really like the bread so they go to the little lake and feed it to the ducks. There’s a woman there who coos over how adorable Sammy is and how sweet Dean is with him, and though Sammy’s all smiles and happiness Dean ducks his head and backs away from her bringing his brother with him. The woman frowns a little, but when Sammy waves at her she waves back, shrugs and returns to her own walk again. Dean knows it’s too early to go back to their room, but then he sees the building with ‘Library’ written over the entrance and he decides to spend a few hours there with Sammy. This is the first time he has taken Sammy to a place like this, but his brother is instantly infatuated and for the next ten years or so, Dean will regularly bring Sammy with him to different libraries.

For a few months John’s gone more than usually, but he remembers to leave both food and money and it seems he even stops drinking for a while. At some point he even takes his boys camping, and Dean’s ecstatic, thinking he finally has his father back. How disappointed he is when John, in the middle of the night drags him out of his sleeping bag and takes him further into the forest. When they reach a clearing John stops and Dean looks up at him, wide eyed and a little scared, seeing as his father haven’t said a word to explain his odd behavior. “There are monsters out there, boy, and they killed your mother to get to Sammy. It’s our job to protect him,” and John grips his shoulders tight and looks him straight in the eye. Dean feels a little uneasy, it’s dark and cold and he does not like being out here, and he’s not sure if it’s his father or the thought of these ‘monsters’ that scares him the most right now. “Do you understand, Dean? We have to take care of Sammy, and to do that you have to learn how to protect him,” at which John holds out a gun, and Dean can’t help but back away a little at the sight. He knows what that is, has seen his father shoot animals with it before, but there’s this feeling that if he takes it he will never be the same again, it will somehow break something inside of him, and that will leave him being less than he is now. He has no way to express these feelings, neither to himself nor his dad and when the gun is shoved into his hand it closes around the handle, and he holds it like he’s seen his father do, and he aims at the bottles that he barely noticed entering the clearing and without hesitation he pulls the trigger and empties the chamber, and there’s glass everywhere and for the first time in years his father looks at him with pride in his eyes, and Dean feels himself growing at the thought. It’s the memory of that look, that pride, on his father’s face that for the next decade makes him his father’s loyal soldier, makes him obey every order his father barks at him, makes him bleed and suffer without complaint, makes him tell Sammy to relax every time he butts heads with their father, in the hope that John will one day look at him like that again. He never does, and the next time John looks at Dean with anything on his face than barely contained anger Dean wishes his father would never look at him again.

***

They keep driving, living in the car or in different motel rooms. Rarely John rents a house or cabin somewhere, and on these occasions Dean and Sam are sent to school. Dean’s not particularly thrilled with this, but Sammy takes to learning as a fish to water. When he brings back report cards - first with gold stars and, as they get older, A’s and B’s - Dean’s so proud of the kid he feels like his chest is about to explode. The first time Sammy runs away he’s six. Sammy has been ranting about school - it’s one of those rare occasions where they are staying somewhere for a prolonged time - and that they should get a dog and settle down. Dean can feel his father’s temper as if it was a sentient being and he silently cowers in a corner, knowing John won’t raise a hand against Sam. He’s surprised when John snaps and actually **yells** at Sammy to ‘shut the fuck up’, and it seems his kid brother is too, because his mouth snaps shut with an audible click. John stands there, fuming, before he turns towards Dean and snarls out an order to ‘look after your brother’ and then he leaves, slamming the door behind him. When they hear the rumble of the Impala’s engine Dean lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and walks towards the kitchen, after all it’s getting late and he should probably start making dinner. He can hear Sammy grumbling and throwing things around, and he knows his brother intends to leave the house. He decides to let him. Dean makes sure to look preoccupied with dinner when Sam checks up on him, and he makes sure to make a lot of noise when he hears the front door opening. He watches Sammy through the kitchen window as his little brother walks out the garden and turns right. He waits for a total of ten seconds before he’s out the door and down the same path. He makes sure to remain unseen, simply keeping track of Sammy, but giving his brother a little peace and quiet. It takes a few hours and a run in with a vicious dog but Sammy comes home with him willingly, and by the time John gets back, still angry and reeking of alcohol Sammy has been fed, bathed and is fast asleep. Then there’s the Strigha-incident and from there everything goes downhill.

***

He gets caught stealing food, and when they notice all the blue marks and bruising on his body they start to ask questions about his family. Dean loudly declares his family would never hurt him, but that’s all they get from him. They put him in a boy’s home, and Dean enjoys every minute, feeling guilty that he’s happy being away from both dad and Sammy, but relishing the freedom anyway. He finds himself drawn towards one of the other boys, a shy, pale kid his own age with a nose that has been broken at some time and eyes big and filled with hurt. Dean wants to wrap the kid in his arms and protect him from everything that might hurt him, but he knows he can’t, so he settles with spending time with him instead. They often sit close together, their foreheads touching and whispering quietly with each other. This is how his father finds him. The instant Dean notices he’s being watched he raises his head slowly but the look on his father’s face is completely alien to him. He can feel something like rage pouring off of John though, so he quietly tells his new friend goodbye and follows his father to the car. Sammy’s happy to have him back, to act like a buffer between Sam and their dad, and though Dean is glad to have Sam again he can’t help but feeling watched, and every time he looks up his father is staring at him with that foreign look Dean can’t identify. But soon they’re back to normal, Sammy complaining that he wants a normal life, John yelling that evil lurks everywhere to grab him, kill him or something even more horrible, Dean simply going through the motions of calming his brother, flirting with waitresses, hustling pool and killing monsters when told to. He gets a feeling Sammy’s planning to leave and this time he most likely won’t be back, so he ups the stakes when he plays and take out a few credit cards his dad doesn’t know about, he even takes the yelling for not bringing home as much as he usually does, just to have more money to stash away for when Sammy leaves. Somewhere around Dean’s 17th birthday they’re hunting a skin walker, and Dean decides to go for celebratory pie when they are done. He flirts shamelessly with the waitress, while Sam makes gagging noises - though quietly and discrete so she doesn’t notice - and John squints his eyes but makes no comment when Dean leaves the diner with her when her shift ends. To Dean she’s a distraction, a reason why he smells like sex when he get home, but he has no intention of getting off with her. But because he tries to be a gentleman - though he’s 17 and horny as hell - he takes her to a movie and some food after wards. He walks her home and gives her a peck on her cheek before he saunters out of her life in the search of someone he _actually_ wants to have sex with. He only have to tour a bar and three clubs before he finds that guy, and he feels sated and boneless when he walks home. In his mind he’s already in bed and fast asleep, so he doesn’t really notice the lamp that’s on or the heavy breathing that signals his father’s displeasure before he is suddenly slammed against a wall and John’s lips are covering his. The shock makes him stiffen and his mind reeling trying to make sense of what’s happening and the broken words flowing from his father. It’s an endless litany of ‘Mary’ and ‘please’ that has Dean fighting to get out of his father’s grip, but John’s desperation has made him impossibly strong and the grip on Dean’s arms is iron tight and impossible to escape, it’s not until he feels his father’s hands on his zipper and the mindless, unconscious rolling of his father’s hips pressing his erection into Dean’s groin that makes him pull up his leg and knee his father as hard as he can. The air leaves John’s lungs immediately and the grip on Dean loosens and he pulls back as far as he can - not far admittedly, the wall’s behind him, and John’s right in front of him - and he watches as realization dawns on John’s face, sees the horror in his eyes, before he crumbles and curls in on himself crying. Dean locks himself in the bathroom, and tries to fall asleep with his back against the door. They never speak of it, but John never really looks at his eldest ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Because you may wonder: When I see John Winchester I see a man half mad with grief who loves his wife (and his sons, too) and because Dean looks like his mother he gets to bear the brunt of John's grief. That's why Dean gets hit and that's why, when something snaps in John, he's suddenly trying to get in Dean's pants - John doesn't see his son but his wife.
> 
> If you ask me this resemblence Dean has with Mary is the reason John is far harsher with Dean in canon than he ever is with Sam, though I'll admit that's speculation on my part :)
> 
> Criticism is most welcome


End file.
